Keidra Chaney

TW: Suicide I learned about the death by suicide of DJ and dancer Stephen “tWitch” Boss at the same time I was preparing my plans to attend a weekend fan memorial for Jonghyun of SHINee, a k-pop musician who died by suicide five years ago this week. I talk about Jonghyun all the time, he […]

“I’m a bad bitch, and I got bad anxiety” – Megan Thee StallionLast weekend I had a panic attack. It was triggered after reading about the crowd crush tragedy in South Korea and going to visit friends shortly afterwards (along with my own lingering feelings of anxiety around socializing in potentially maskless crowds). It took me […]

For as long as I can remember I’ve been terrified of zombies. (Yes, I know they are not real.) Just the concept of zombies terrifies me, though, to the point that I can’t even watch ads for shows like The Walking Dead. The reason for my fear has always been the idea of someone you […]

Back in the early days of The Learned Fangirl, when it was just a personal co-blog and we weren’t serious about it, Raizel and I had a recurring feature we called “TLF has Bad Taste” where we would riff on the weird pop culture issues we obsessed over for no reason in an essay that held […]

Originally performed at Tuesday Funk, September 1, 2020 This is a story about the power of love and nurturing during hard times. It’s also a story about hate, and how sometimes hate is transformative, sometimes liberating. I know that in these divisive times. talking about embracing hate doesn’t feel constructive, but please bear with me, […]

originally performed at Miss Spoken, on March 25 2020 Back in January, I got together with a friend for the first time in about a year and a half. We caught up on a lot of the shit going in our lives, and we talked about our plans and dreams and goals and self-betterment for […]

Originally performed at the 1st Annual Naw-scars show in Chicago on Feb 7, 2020 I first heard about Hair Love, the Oscar-Nominated animated short, in 2017, when it was a Kickstarter campaign from director Matthew Cherry. I saw the pitch for it on Twitter, thought the idea was cute, threw some money at it, and kept […]

It’s the first week of 2020, so of course I am feeling at once overwhelmed and refreshed. Thinking about possibilities while also trying to catch up (at least with work). It’s been a good opportunity for me to think about what I want to do and what I don’t want to do, this year, and […]